Ralph Compton - Bounty Hunter

Tone continued to stare into the mirror, like a man in a deep trance. He remembered another face, not unlike the one in his reflection, but twenty years younger and much less hard and uncompromising. And he recalled a voice, the good-natured bellow of big, laughing Michael O’Rourke.

Suddenly he was in another time and in a more ancient, greener place . . .

“Ah, my lad, ’tis a wonderful tenor voice you have and no mistake,” O’Rourke said, slapping seventeen-year-old John Tone on the back. “You must turn the angels sick with envy.”

“Sing us another, John,” a man yelled from the bar.

The pub in the village of Ballenlake, deep in the Wicklow Mountains, was crowded that day in the bitter winter of 1867, as Ireland licked her wounds and nursed her festering grievances. With great brutality, the British had crushed the Éirí Amach na bhFiann, the Irish Fenian revolt, a few months before, and many of Erin’s heroes had danced their last jig at the end of a hangman’s noose.

The men present, and the few crooning grannies huddled by the fire, took whatever solace they could find in whiskey and the auld music. As it had been for hundreds of years, the British would write the history of the ’67 revolt and the Irish would write the songs.

“Give us ‘The Old Fenian Gun,’ John,” the man at the bar called out, to an instant chorus of approval.

“Sing, is it?” young Tone asked. “And with me pipes as dry as sticks.”

The man at the bar yelled, “Hey, Molly, get the boy a pint of porter.”

“He can have a glass of cider,” Molly O’Hara said, tossing her glossy black mane of hair. “John is too young to be drinking porter and ale with the rest of you sots.”

“Ho, John, when you marry Molly, she’ll put a ring through your nose and lead you around like Tom Flaherty’s bull.” The man laughed.

Molly was the pub landlord’s daughter, a quick, lively girl who was the same age as John. They had been walking out together for a year, and everyone expected their nuptials to be announced soon, this despite her being the daughter of a wealthy pub owner and John the poor son of a poorer widow.

John adored Molly with the hot, ardent fervor known only to the very young and, as far as he was aware, she returned his love in equal measure.

The girl set the glass of cider on the table before John and flashed him a dazzling smile that was both warm and affectionate.

Then, from the bar: “Come now, John. ‘The Old Fenian Gun,’ it is.”

Molly rounded on the man. “He won’t be singing that rebel song, Tom Doyle! If the British hear him he’ll be hung. They’re hanging men and women for less these days.”

“Aye, what you say is true, Molly O’Hara,” the man called Doyle said. “And, by Christ, more will swing before these troubles are over.”

“That will do, Tom,” said a small man dressed in black, a clerical collar at his neck. “ ’Tis a mortal sin to take the Lord’s name in vain.”

“And indeed it was not a curse, Father,” Doyle said. “I used the Lord’s holy name as a prayer for all the poor martyrs the English government will hang this winter.”

A gloom settled over the bar as the banshee wind howled outside and rain hammered against the pub windows.

“I don’t fear the English,” Tone said with a youngster’s reckless bravado. “I’ll sing the song for you, Tom Doyle.”

“Good lad,” Doyle yelled, and the others cheered.

Tone threw back his head and in a fine tenor voice began the old rebel song, written to commemorate failed rebellion.

It hung above the kitchen fire, its barrel long and brown, And one day with a boy’s desire, I climbed and took it down.

Me father’s eyes in anger flashed. He cried, “What have you done?

“I wish you’d left it where it was, that’s my old Fenian gun.”

I fondled it with love and pride, I looked it o’er and o’er.

I placed it on my shoulder, and I marched across the floor.

My father’s anger softened, and as he shared my boyish fun,

“Ah, well,” he said, “ ’tis in your breed, that old Fenian gun.”

I remember—

The pub door crashed open and four British soldiers swaggered inside, led by a huge, burly sergeant, his veined face the color of fired brick. Dripping rain, the men strode to the bar and the sergeant slammed the palm of a beefy hand on the polished mahogany.

“Four pints of porter, and be quick about it,” he demanded.

James O’Hara, as big as the sergeant and angry, slapped away the man’s hand. “We serve no redcoats here, so be off with you.”

“You serve no redcoats ’ere, is it? You’ll be serving us or I’ll burn this place down around your bleedin’ ears.”

“You’ll get no porter in my pub. Now be off with you or I’ll report you to your officer.”

“Like he cares?” The soldiers around the sergeant laughed. Suddenly the man reached out, grabbed O’Hara by the shirtfront and slammed his ham of a right fist into the landlord’s face. The blow shook O’Hara and he would have fallen had not the soldier kept him on his feet. The sergeant hit him again, and everyone in the bar heard the bones of his nose shatter.

Suddenly Molly was on the Englishman like a tigress, screaming her rage as her small fists hammered into his face and head. “Leave my father alone, you bastard!” she yelled.

The big soldier ducked his head against the blows raining down on him. He tried to push Molly away. “Get off me, you papist bitch!”

John sprang to his feet, but immediately two of the privates leveled their Enfield rifle muskets at his chest.

Opposite Tone, Michael O’Rourke, who had fought in the recent rebellion, also rose, but he laid a restraining hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Not yet, John,” he whispered. “They’ll kill you. Not yet, lad.”

O’Rourke, a left-handed man, was furtively reaching into the pocket of his coat.

Then Tone saw Molly O’Hara die.

The big sergeant had grabbed the girl by the shoulders, and his bearded, open mouth sought hers. “Give us a kiss, darlin’,” he said with a grin. “I’ll wager you’ve already been done enough times that you won’t miss it.”

Molly spat in the man’s face and her fingernails taloned his cheek, drawing blood as scarlet as his coat.

The sergeant cursed and backhanded a vicious slap across the girl’s face. She stumbled away from him and fell, the back of her neck slamming into the corner of a heavy oak table on the way down.

Later, men said Molly O’Hara must have been dead when she hit the floor.

O’Rourke roared in fury and pulled a .442 Tranter revolver from his pocket. If the British soldiers had been militia, recruited for the duration of the rebellion, the big Irishman might have stood a chance. But they were regulars and well trained.

Before he could even level the Tranter two heavy balls crashed into O’Rourke’s chest. The big man yelled, “They’ve killed me, lads,” then dropped, the revolver falling from his suddenly nerveless fingers.

The gun thudded onto the table and without a thought, Tone picked it up. The soldiers who had shot O’Rourke were reloading, and the boy ignored them. The third private had been pinned between his sergeant and the bar and was trying to extricate himself. The man wriggled free and his rifle came up fast.

Tone fired. Hit hard, the soldier slammed against the bar and slid to the floor. The sergeant turned, his face shocked and Tone shot him.

He did not wait to see the effect of his bullet on the man, but fired at the two privates who had reloaded and were bringing their rifles to bear. Both men were hit, one discharging his rifle into the ceiling as he fell.